Episode 10 - Take Your Blog to the Next Level by Mike Allton

Should you be blogging at this point in your business? Content marketing has always been on top of the list of any organization's or brand's marketing strategies, and for a good reason. In particular, blogging as a form of content marketing has helped many companies achieve success in measurable ways. For one, it can help you establish thought leadership in the industry. It can also drive traffic to your website and increase the likelihood of conversions. But, how can you maximize the benefits of blogging so it can continually help you with sales and marketing? In this episode of BRADS.LIVE, we discover many ways to generate content, make use of tools, and genuinely help people with your blog content while growing your company. Mike Allton is a speaker, award-winning blogger, author, and brand evangelist. His blog, The Social Media Hat is a content marketing haven and resource complete with ebooks, guides, and free articles for small businesses. Mike teaches businesses strategies, tactics, and tools for success through content marketing together with SEO, social media, and mobile apps. He is also an Agorapulse brand evangelist, strengthening its relationship with agencies, influencers, social media educators and brands. In this Episode: How Mike has been blogging for 10 years and how he started The Social Media Hat The direct relationship between the amount of content created and speed of online success How helpful content brings in traffic, leads, and sales conversions The results of a HupSpot study on how effective content creation is for numerous companies How blogs generate organic traffic How to overcome the challenges of creating enough posts for your blog How blog posts should ideally come from your own experience or opinion instead of being heavily researched How to use Evernote to track your ideas for blog topics Making use of your audience's frequently asked questions and questions they're supposed to be asking as blog post ideas How to use videos or video interviews as the basis for your content How content creation is more cost-effective and inbound marketing-oriented The advantages of content publishing vs. Cold-calling How to develop the blogger's mindset How sharing about personal interests can make you relatable and focusing on only one interest for branding purposes The real essence of newsjacking and leveraging the news cycle bell curve Considerations on what you can write about in relation to interest and layering How to gauge which content is relevant for your audience using tools How blogging should be very conversational like you are speaking to your audience directly How to create authentic content that's more your own than outsourced How to do SEO by linking, interlinking, and creating long-form content How to use Agorapulse to custom-promote your content